2nd Major Update: All previous major updates are still below at the end, but this Rasmussen poll has to be at the top:

Voters are madder than ever at the current policies of the federal government.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 75% of likely voters now say they are at least somewhat angry at the governmentâ€™s current policies, up four points fromÂ late November and up nine points sinceÂ September. The overall figures include 45% who are Very Angry, also a nine-point increase since September.

80% disapprove, 75% are angry, and 45% are really angry?? Heaven help incumbents this year – especially Democrat ones - end update

For those Democrats who think racing over the far left cliff of political extremism is going to win them any respect, votes or long lasting change (the next Congress will undo everything this Congress passes without any hesitation or risk) Â I suggest they look at the following signs of a November political train wreck at Gallup:

The fact is over 80% of this nation now disapproves of where DC is going, nearly 90% of independents join nearly 90% of republicans in this view. I know the Dems are are starting to finally Â lose the far left liberals, but they are also hardening the rejection in the center making it almost inevitable they will lose control of the House and making it very possible they could lose the Senate as well. To do so would be a historic loss, but so far President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid seemed hell bent on calling The People’s Bluff.

They want to see if America really will reject far left policies once again, as we have since this country was founded. Being blind to the past, these far left zealots forget that socialist tendencies are alive in societies built upon the foundations of royalty (and thus the desire by the middle and lower classesÂ to look to the Lordly class for their needs ). America – along with Canada and Australia – were built upon the frontier independence of the individual and local communities. We offshoots of Britannia do not look to ‘The Lords” for anything but the potential for restrictions, graft and slavery.

This is why we America and our cousin nations are the world’s most successful societies and why America is a melting pot culture – we admire and respect the individual and have deep distrust of government bureaucracies. Our culture is one of multi-cultural individualism.

When liberals prove our deep seated cultural concerns to be spot on by going rogue and running rough shod over our wishes from DC it will not lead to their political success. In a democracy like ours, it leads to political oblivion. If we cannot trust you with the reigns of power, you will not get them back again – evah!

Congress is now about as popular as it was when the country threw out the GOP for running too far right. The people trusted the Democrats to moderate and they failed to do so. They also failed to fix the nation’s problems with tried and true things like across the board tax cuts and lowered spending, so our vaunted economic engine could fire up again. When you divert the energy from the economy and shove it down a bloated and bureaucratic black hole, it is not surprising the economy is slow to revive. Everyone right of liberalism knows this to be true – and that runs from John F Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to George W Bush to Senator Scott Brown (R-MA).

Liberals keep talking about passing legislation and then dying on their sword, as if what they pass will be cast in stone. So naive. So misguided. Such a waste of precious time.

What better reason to clean house(s) this November.

The dates above with Congressional lows are very important. They signal years or cycles when the party in power were swept out of office in huge numbers. It seems we are already heading into another one of those cycles, and the liberals in DC are daring us to “bring it on!”. So be it.

It is clear we are seeing the last putsche of the liberal/socialists, and they plan to go out in a flame of disapproval (instead of glory).

Major Update: Jay Cost over at RCP has to be one of the preeminent minds on politics and US government out there. He has a piece out today which drives to the core of what is wrong with President Obama’s governance and why he and the Dems are failing so badly. It is an important tutorial on government and politics which is a must read by everyone.

First some US Government:

Let’s acknowledge that governing the United States of America is an extremely difficult task. Intentionally so. When designing our system, the Founders were faced with a dilemma. How to empower a vigorous government without endangering liberty or true republicanism?

…

The solution the country ultimately settled on had five important features: checks and balances so that the branches would police one another; a large republic so that majority sentiment was fleeting and not intensely felt; a Senate where the states would be equal; enumerated congressional powers to limit the scope of governmental authority; and the Bill of Rights to offer extra protection against the government.

You cannot fight the essence of our government’s architecture. Power is distributed in ways which dictate how success can be achieved. And now some clear headed political observations:

It’s not accurate to blame this on the Republicans. From Arlen Specter’s defection to Scott Brown’s swearing in, Democrats had total control over the policy-making process. The only recourse the Republicans had was the First Amendment. They used it well, but don’t let it be said that the President lacked access to it. Given Mr. Obama’s bully pulpit and his omnipresence on the national stage, his voice has been louder than anybody’s. If Mr. Obama has lost the public debate to the beleaguered rump that is the congressional GOP, he has nobody to blame but himself.

It’s not accurate to blame this on “spineless Democrats,” i.e. rank-and-file legislators who balked at the various solutions offered by Mr. Obama. Moderate Democrats might have defected because they were worried about their jobs – but the point of popular elections is to link the personal interests of legislators with the interests of their constituents. It often fails to work – but in a situation where “spineless Democrats” clearly voted with their districts, it seems to have been working pretty well. One might argue that they should have shown some leadership – voted for unpopular bills because they were good for the country. But ask those thirty to forty House Democratic defectors on the health care, cap-and-trade, and jobs bills whether they thought the bills were good for the country, and you’ll hear a different answer than the oneÂ Newsweek is quick to give.

It’s not accurate to blame this on the people. This country is most certainly divided, but not deeply so. Consider, for instance, the enormous goodwill that greeted Mr. Obama upon his inauguration. It is not tenable to suggest that there was no way to turn that into a broad consensus for policy solutions.

Yet, this is exactly where the liberals place all the blame – everywhere else but themselves.

First, President Obama has installed Nancy Pelosi as de facto Prime Minister – giving her leave to dominate not only the House, but also the entire domestic policy agenda. The indefatigable Speaker Pelosi has taken advantage of the President’s laissez-faire attitude by governing from the left.

…

The President’s second major failing has been his stubborn insistence on comprehensive reforms. Perhaps this is due to his inexperience in the federal lawmaking process, or his extraordinary vanity, or both. Still, this has been a grave mistake. If the truly great Henry Clay could not pass the Compromise of 1850 through the Congress in a single package, what made Barack Obama think he could sign comprehensive energy and health care reforms?

Clearly one of the most cogent articles I have read in years, and it clearly identifies the failures of this President – in all likelihood due to his severe lack of DC and Executive experience.

I think Obama today has just made a grave tactical mistake, and most Dems don’t see it yet.

Or to put it more accurately, he has just made a pretty good bid to drive his own personal popularity numbers back up, but he’s selling all the congressional dem’s down the river. I think they’re going to figure that out pretty fast.

I’m talking about Obama’s call to the Republicans to have a health care summit and to put forth their own ideas for reforming health care. This is what should have been done last summer, of course, and will go a good way towards reviving the image of Obama as a bipartisan figure, willing to be the President of *all*, not just the far left. That’s certainly why he’s doing it.

BUT – this is going to be the death of any Health Care Bill, and the death of the Congressional Dems who supported it. Why? Because it’s gotten too far along for any Republican to support it as it is. The entire structure, put together without any input even from Snowe or Collins is impossible to support. There’s no small fixes to this bill that can be made now – if he really wants GOP ideas, this bill needs to be scrapped and drafting the bill need to be restarted from scratch.

Here’s the problem – there’s no time left for that this year. There are too many other things to do, and the constant debate over this bill is the steady drip, drip, drip of poison onto the approval numbers of this Congress. The more they talk about it and do nothing, the more disgusted all sides – including the left – get with them. (That’s why their numbers are dropping so much lately, even the left is bailing) Republicans can simply play for time – the longer this is debated, the more the public hates Congress. Talk all the way up to the election, then! But the Left in the House is too strong to ever let any GOP compromise bill through, so in the end nothing will happen – stalemate. And all that effort will simply reinforce the view that this is a hopeless, dysfunctional Congress that needs to be completely replaced, which is exactly the narrative the GOP wants to have in place going into this November.

Will it make Obama look better? Temporarily – but when it becomes clear that in the end this only led to more failure, that pop will fade and his administration will have failed on almost every major initiative. Plus, even his own team will start to hate him as they realize he sold them out in an attempt to save himself.

WWS I hope your right. I fear Pinnochio may be doing this to try to put the pressure on and peel off just two Repubs. Seems to me thats’ all they would need if the Dems can force thier coalition to go along on the current bill.
I don’t see how Repubs getting into a televised debate of any kind with Obama helps them at all. They need to take thier ideas directly to the American people. Any interaction with Pinnochio will simply bolster his Bii partisan credes , falsely, and the sound bites that the media airs from such a process will be just more Obama propaganda.
I fear the arrogance of some Repubs will not allow them to politely decline this invitation and they will do their best to show up and pander to the people. A President who has no compunction about lying directly to their faces and the American people will make them look the fools, at least thats’ the part the media will show.
Seems i read where Pinnochio has rejected scrapping the current bill and starting over and without that premise to start with this is an exercise in positive publicity and resuurection of the Titanic by the arrogant Repubs.
You do not wrestle in the mud with a pig, the pig loves it and you come out dirty, this is an apt analogy for what Pinnochio proposes and the Repubs had better decline without scrapping of the mess thats currently on the tabel.

Paul Ryan has the problem of the center that is keeping the country from finding solutions. His roadmap is a great beginning but it never gets off the ground because it takes hits from the right and the left. Especially the left. Specifically the center-left is the biggest obstacle to running the country from the center. As I have said in the past the center-left always sides with the left over the center when the chips are down. When the center-left moves to the center and turns its back on the left then the country has a chance.

Poor Paul’s proposal is not even dry and the far left and far right are denouncing its provisions. Whe Paul Ryan becomes Speaker of the House it will be different to have someone govern from the center as opposed to Delay and Hastert who ran the House from the right. Ryan will have a chance because the center-right will move to the center (RINOs all), but (and this is a big but), will the center-left join in to pass some sensible legislation?

BTW, on the Senate side, I beginning to call 2010 the revenge of the moderates. Brown, Ayotte, Kirk, Lowden, Norton, Campbell (CA), Simmons (I hope the CT Republicans are smart), and maybe Thompson in WI and Pataki in NY.

Mr. BushObama has reacted by railing against DemocratsRepublicans for obstruction – as if DemocratsRepublicans are duty-bound to breathe life into his agenda and, even sillier, as if opposing a plan that the people do not want is an illegitimate tactic for an opposition party.